Organizations and their consumers: bridging work and consumption

Deadline 28 February 2014

Guest editors:

Yiannis Gabriel, University of Bath, UK

Marek Korczynski, University of Nottingham, UK

Kerstin Rieder, Aalen University, Germany

The last 20 years or so have seen a far-reaching reconfiguration of the characters that dominate the world of organizations. For much of its life, the study of organizations was dominated by two central characters, the manager and the worker, whose relationship with all its tensions, conflicts and accommodations unfolded within a broader environment of markets, governments, shareholders, social institutions, technological forces and so forth. In recent years, however, there has been a substantial movement to change the two-actor show into a three-actor show, the organizational dyad into a triad. The newcomer to the stage has been the consumer, a character whose whims, habits, desires and practices are no longer seen as ‘impacting on’ the activities of managers and workers from the outside but increasingly as defining them. At times the referee in the management-labour contest, the consumer is often called upon to take sides, declare winners and losers, and even define the rules of the game (e.g. Bauman, 1998; du Gay, 1996; Gabriel, 2005, 2010; Korczynski and Macdonald, 2009; Korczynski et al., 2000; Stein, 2007; Sturdy et al., 2001).

Politics, identity, structure, culture and so forth can no longer be viewed from a perspective of the old fashioned tug-of-war of control, power, resistance and conflict between workers and bosses. Instead they are increasingly viewed through a ‘lens’ that acknowledges the triadic nature of contemporary work and organization. Triads are radically different configurations from dyads. They are more unstable, they involve potentially shifting alliances and conflicts in which the third party can be the stakes or the beneficiary. The entry of the consumer as an important figure into the world of organizations has therefore not just complicated matters, by sometimes tipping the balance in unexpected and ambiguous ways. It has radically reshaped the nature of contemporary work, the more so as different parties of the triad are frequently found to swap masks and adopt each other’s position. The worker is employee as indeed is the manager. The manager becomes worker in her dealings with her superiors and customer in her relations with different departments within her own organization. Customers often re-enter an organization as managers or workers and, increasingly, work knowingly or unknowingly for organizations that do not employ them – they offer ideas and feedback, they discover new uses for existing products, they provide helpful suggestions to other customers.

One of the reasons why the consumer has been brought into the world of organizations has been the rise of consumerism with its cathedrals of consumption colonizing many parts of the globe. Consumerism has now infiltrated most sectors of the economy including education, health, social and community care, catering, tourism, retail, finance, transport, professional services, computing and so forth, where large armies of employees are involved in ‘front line work’—dealing with customers, servicing them, advising them, keeping them happy (Bauman, 2001; Fotaki, 2011; Gabriel and Lang, 2006; Hochschild, 2012; Ritzer, 1999). Additionally, an increasing proportion of workers in developed countries are now working directly with customers in service and other occupations. Front line work makes different demands on individuals (both managers and workers) and groups from manufacturing or back office jobs, safely insulated from the critical gaze of the customer. Instead, front line jobs emphasize the importance of the employees’ emotional labour, social and verbal skills, appearance and demeanour under pressure (Fineman and Sturdy, 1999; Hancock and Tyler, 2000; Nixon, 2009; Warhurst and Nickson, 2009; Warhurst et al., 2000; Wharton, 2009). A third reason why the role of consumers in organizations is gaining importance is the rise of a new type of consumer, the working customer. This refers to work that was previously carried out by employees and is now being outsourced to the customer (Cova and Dalli, 2009; Rieder and Voß, 2010). Organizations ranging from IKEA and McDonald’s to Trip Advisor and Amazon have discovered a huge diversity of ways of getting their customers to work for them, such labour frequently extending to their families, friends and peers.

Consumerism has now entered many organizational and management discourses, though its ramifications are still not fully appreciated. Disciplinary divisions between organizational theory and marketing, consumer studies and the sociology of work, cultural studies and studies of organizational culture continue to divide scholars in their different fields. We invite contributions that will seek to bridge these divisions. In particular, we welcome papers that develop the following areas of scholarship:

• the implications of the move towards a triad of key actors for organizational theorizing

• the reconfiguration of organizations as customer-focused entities and attendant systematic profiling and exploitation of customer ideas and feedback

• the process of outsourcing to the consumers and their exploitation

• the relation between consumer resistance and workplace resistance

• cathedrals of consumption as places of encounters between workers and consumers

• identities shaped and contested at the interface of production and consumption

• gender and sexuality in customer-focused organizations

• organizational consumption—i.e. consumption that takes routinely place as part of organizational life

• the service interface between employee and consumer—toxicity, conflict, caring and solidarity across this interface

• narratives bringing together the worker, the manager and the consumer

• emotional work, body work, and aesthetic labour

• understanding the bridge between the relationship of the three actors within organizations, and the relationship of the actors’ representative bodies within civil society and the wider polity

• consumer freedom, customer choice and their effects on organizations

• the impact of hegemonic consumerism of the eco-system and environmental limits to its expansion

• the integration of customers into the organization and its impact on their private lives

• careers, psychological contracts and quality of working life under global consumer capitalism

• cross-cultural and postcolonial politics and dynamics under global consumer capitalism